Solo piano, performed by Roger Woodward. "It is fitting that Hans Otte's Stundenbuch/Book Of Hours, recorded by pianist Roger Woodward on a Bösendorfer at the Radio Bremen concert hall, is a co-production between Celestial Harmonies and Radio Bremen. The piece was commissioned by Radio Bremen for its Pro Musica Nova 1996, the highly-regarded biennial festival for contemporary music founded (in 1961) and directed (from 1962) by Hans Otte, during his tenure as Head of Music at Radio Bremen (1959 to 1984). Through this festival, Otte had opened doors to countless composers, had given opportunities to realize ideas and concepts, and had helped composers such as John Cage, David Tudor, La Monte Young, Nam June Paik, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti and Dieter Schnebel. Writes pianist Roger Woodward, 'In the closing years of the twentieth century, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the Bremen pianist-composer, Hans Otte, disciple of the visionaries Walter Gieseking and John Cage, emerges as the unsurpassed master of the sublime, lyric poetry with his composition of a true masterpiece in moment form for piano entitled Stundenbuch/Book Of Hours.' In a universe of exalted, fragmented but delicately-balanced sonorities, the audacious design of time-suspended galaxies in Otte's highly-intimate, miniature-art and enigmatic but constant shift of movement and mood, form four books in twelve parts each, to span a golden arc extending from prima and seconda prattica to the sonnets of Shakespeare; divine melodic genius of Mozart; inscrutable logic of late-Beethoven; Elysian fields of Schubertian Ländler and Chopinian cantilena of the Nocturnes, in poetic homage and as an inclusive part of his magnificent North-German inheritance."

minimum:maximum (1973): texts / sounds / pictures. An environment (simultaneous concert in Stockholm and Bremen) for two organists: Karl-Erik Welin and Gerd Zacher, keyboard instruments. orient:occident (1977): for two woodwind-players and tape: Ingo Goritzki, oboe; Hans-Wilhelm Goetzke, clarinet. "Perhaps best known for his piano work 'Book of Sounds' these two works by German composer Hans Otte were composed in the 1970s. In that decade his aesthetic creed became increasingly clear: 'the search for the character and individuality of sound as such, which must be rediscovered and re-experienced independent of superimposed structures. The composer understands the dialogue with sounds as the discovery of their nature.' (Ute Schalz-Laurenze). While Hans Otte was an enthusiastic, one might say visionary promoter of fellow composers, such as John Cage and David Tudor, whose impacts had registered to the general public long after their force reached the surface, he nevertheless remained deeply committed to his own music. Otte's writings, simple lines that say: 'words are just something added on'; 'all great things laugh'; 'when something is reminiscent of nothing'; and, 'it's really something -- that voice that was once in the mouth,' all direct us to his music, because: 'everything always happens: Now.' It is Otte's music that betrays his particularity of thought to what (is everything), how (it happens), and when (is now). Words are just something added on. Collectively, these aphorisms reflect an aesthetic that dispenses with words which may address themselves to an understanding of the world. Here, however, the world to be understood is indescribable. What is everything? When is now? How does it happen? The message is that words tell, music is. Listen. The titles of these works: orient:occident and minimum:maximum, suggest a relationship between seemingly disparate things to remind us of Otte's adage: 'It is the gardener who owns the garden.'"